Call centers are frequently operated by companies to administer incoming product support and information inquiries from consumers. Companies that use call centers may include, for example, utility companies, mail order catalog companies, and computer hardware and software companies. A call center distributes calls and other types of communications to available agents in accordance with various predetermined criteria. The criteria for handling a call are often programmable by the operator of the system via a capability known as call vectoring. Typically, when a call center system detects that an agent has become available to handle a call, the system delivers to that agent the longest-waiting call. Once an agent receives a call, the agent usually is required to populate a computerized record of the interaction. This computerized record will often include fields such as the contact information of the caller, the time and duration of the call, the agent handling the call, the matter presented, and any activities directed at resolving the matter. In other words, the computerized record will act as written history of the communications between a given caller and the call center.
A given call to a call center is frequently handled by more than one agent. Call center agents are often organized into a multi-tier system to facilitate the efficient handling of calls. The lower tier typically consists of agents who are able to handle most matters with a given caller. However, if the caller requires more assistance, the caller is forwarded to one or more higher tiers of support, typically staffed by managers, or, in the case of technical matters, by more highly skilled support staff such as product engineers and developers. Calls to call centers are also sometimes dropped because of technical glitches in either the call center system itself or in the communication system used to direct the incoming calls to the call center. Because of the number of agents working at a given call center at any one time, a caller who calls back after being dropped is likely to be directed to an agent different from the one that the caller initially spoke with before being dropped.
Because of both the forwarding of calls and the dropping of calls, an agent (a “subsequent agent”) must frequently handle a caller who has already spoken with a different agent (an “original agent”). In coming up to speed on the caller's matter, the subsequent agent may, to some extent, rely on any entries made in the caller's computerized record by the original agent, but, more often than not, must make the caller repeat all or some of the information that the caller already communicated to the original agent. This is especially true when the matter is complicated or of a technical nature, and the original agent is not equipped to adequately record the matter in the caller's computerized record. This repeating of information may be an inefficient use of the subsequent agent's time, and, perhaps more importantly, may be frustrating to the caller who is required to communicate the same information more than once.
As a result, there is a need for a means of efficiently handling a caller's matter using more than one agent without requiring that the caller repeat the same information.